Leslie Cane Articles

By: Leslie Cane: Unfortunately, the people who typically read my articles are not in the best or happiest of marital situations. Usually, they have or will be faced with talks of divorce and they’re often the spouse who wants to save the marriage while the other wants to end it. I know from experience that this is a very difficult situation to be in – one in which you feel that you are constantly walking on eggshells and petrified of doing the wrong thing.

Often, your head is telling you to do one thing while your heart is telling you to do something else entirely. And, advice is usually being thrown at you from all sides. While some people will tell you to protect yourself and limit your losses, others will tell you to delay parting as long as possible while fighting (hard) for your marriage. I must disclose that I believe that it is rarely too late to save a marriage, so I won’t offer you legal advice about your divorce (and I’m not an attorney anyway.) However, I also think that it’s risky to put on blinders. I’ll discuss how I personally feel is best to proceed in this article.

First, Focus Just On Improving The Interactions Between You (While Hiding Any Agenda:) Whether the divorce happens or not, things are going to be much easier for you if you and your spouse can get on the same page. And, if you want to save your marriage, it’s going to impossible to do if your husband has blocked access to him.

So, it’s vitally important that you make clear to him that you will no longer engage in behaviors that are going to drive you further apart. Make clear that you agree completely that the marriage needs serious work and that you both deserve better than what you have been getting. Tell him that although you think it’s possible to save the marriage, you agree that neither of you can tell the future so the best that you can do right now is to just to focus on making your day-to-day interactions more pleasant – since it’s silly that two people who once loved each other very much can’t interact in a positive way. Reiterate that your spouse is too important to you to allow you to become adversaries.

It’s so important that you be as convincing as possible here. Because your spouse will likely immediately have warning bells going off in his head that scream “lookout, agenda, plan, or manipulation ahead.” And, even if you give an Oscar-winning performance, he is still going to suspect this a little bit. That’s OK. Because from this point on, we’ll be showing him, not telling him.

Don’t Allow Desperation And Frustration To Force Your Hand And Allow For Mistakes: When the divorce clock is ticking, it’s so easy to panic. You feel as though you must take some drastic and lasting action immediately to right this thing. The truth is, even if your husband has or will already file divorce papers, these things do take a considerable amount of time to go through.

And while I would never advise you to just ignore what is going on around you, at the same time, you can not panic and act in negative ways because you feel the end of your marriage breathing down your neck. By all means, get legal representation if you see things moving forward, but don’t dig in your heels and make things worse by panicking and allowing your worst self to show through on full display, especially if you want to save your marriage. (I am telling you this because I DID put my worst self on display.  And it was disastrous.)

Remember when you promised your spouse that you would only focus on creating positive interactions between you? Always remember this. What you want to display is the spouse who wants to save the marriage, but who is dealing with the situation with dignity and grace, partly because she has respect for both herself and her husband, and partly because she wants her spouse to be happy and validated. At this point, it’s always a good idea to get out and see your friends, put a smile on your face, do what makes you happy, and make sure your husband knows about this.

Always Be Mindful Of Who You Are Displaying To Your Husband (And Everyone Else, Including Yourself:) Along those same lines, you want to put on full display the woman your husband was first attracted to. I know that at first glance this seems silly and impossible, but please stay with me. I know you can’t turn back the hands of time. I understand that the circumstances are different today. But, what if you could pinpoint exactly what your husband loved about you and could bring back those qualities? And, I don’t mean your twenty-year-old hot body or the easy-to-please girl who had no responsibilities. I mean the woman who made full and adoring eye contact when the two of you talked for hours, the one who had the easy laugh and the laid back way of making everything seem right in the world. The one who understood her husband better than anyone else and loved him passionately anyway.

I cannot tell you how many men tell me that they feel abandoned by their wives. I know this sounds dramatic, but common phrases that I hear are things like: “I am last on her to-do list,” “I feel like being intimate with me is like a distasteful task she has to schedule that she is glad to get out of the way,” or “she doesn’t even try to understand me anymore.”

Understanding Universal Longing. We All Feel It: The truth is, at the end of the day, everyone wants to feel loved, understood, appreciated, and worthy of your time and attention. Many times, when a husband wants a divorce, it’s because the closeness and intimacy are gone and he’s bitterly disappointed and so completely lonely within his own home and marriage. He’s not good at communicating this with you, he’s embarrassed to be so needy, and his natural inclination is to just shut down.

So, knowing all of the above, if you want to save your marriage, your job is to very slowly improve your strategy so that your spouse can trust that you have the best of intentions because you are the person he has known (and loved) all along.  This is your starting point.  And you’ll move methodically from there. You don’t want to move too quickly or it may scare him away). Once this happens, you must show him that the woman who once valued and understood him as much as herself is still very much present.

I know that the journey may seem long if you are starting from a place of despair. But stay the course.  Admittedly, this process took longer than I wanted it to, but I did save my marriage.  And that is all that matters. You can read that story at http://isavedmymarriage.com/

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